Page 56 of Beautiful When He Breaks

That should be comforting. Some days it is. Other days, it scares the shit out of me.

While the part of me that’s exhausted and furious—so fucking sick of being cornered—wants to hand him a Molotov and point him at Coach Blakely’s whole life, the rest of me still freezes up when I think about consequences becoming real. About reports and investigations, names on paper, and my secret turning into something other people get to discuss in offices with fluorescent lights.

So, I don’t ask. I let Killian move in whatever dark, expensive, highly competent way he’s moving, and I focus on football, Mila, the house, and Eli, because those things still fit in my hands.

Football’s easier than the rest of it. That’s the lie I tell myself and for the first thirty minutes, it almost feels true. The pads crack loud enough to rattle thoughts loose. The drills demand so much that nobody has much room for private misery. Luca’s running us through route timing with that captain voice of his, clipped and so familiar it almost counts as comfort.

Eli’s back in sync today and seeing that makes the tightness in my chest ease without my permission. He’s started smiling again. I keep catching myself doing it lately—tracking him for evidence of light.

I’m not proud of how much that matters to me. It’s pathetic in a very specific, humiliating way to realize your emotional stability is partly tied to whether your best friend looks less shattered this week than he did the last. But there it is.

He was drowning in shock and legal paperwork and milk-stained exhaustion not too long ago. Now, he’s laughing under his breath because Luca just faked a handoff so badly during a drill that even the freshman wideout on the edge of the line snorted.

“Your acting is dogshit,” Eli says, tugging his helmet off for a second while we reset.

Luca presses one hand to his chest, pretending to be offended. “You’re talking to a quarterback with range.”

“Admit that was kak acting, bru,” I tell him, dragging the back of my wrist over my forehead. “If that’s range, it’s all in the wrong direction.”

A couple of the guys nearby laugh, and Luca flips me off with absolute calm. “That’s rich coming from somebody who missed the cone on the last cut.”

“I was distracted by your public humiliation.”

“Bullshit,” Eli mutters. “You just can’t plant worth a damn on the left side when you’re tired.”

I look over at him, and there it is again. That light. Real this time, not forced. His eyes are brighter, his mouth easier, and even with the sweat, the heat, and the strain of practice dragging at all of us, he looks more alive than he did for weeks after the call with his parents.

He still carries it, obviously. Nobody gets a father’s voice in their head and just shakes it off. But the edge of raw panic is gone from him most days. Mila did that. The house did that. Time did some of it, too. Maybe the tiny return of stability counts for more than either of us expected.

Or maybe he’s just slept more since Mrs. Alvarez started coming regularly during the day. That woman has become a legend in our household. She runs Mila’s afternoons with disturbing efficiency, calls Ryan “mijo” in a tone that makes him obey her instantly, and once told Thorn he had “beautiful manners hidden somewhere under all that hockey nonsense,” which knocked him so off balance he almost walked into the kitchen island.

Eli trusts her now—you can see it in the way his shoulders ease a bit every time he leaves the house. He still checks his phone more than he should, but he can get through a full practice without looking at it like the world is actively ending.

Coach blows the whistle and sends us back into position. We run another sequence, and this one gets messy because Luca starts talking shit mid-rep, which is exactly the kind of thing that ends badly for everyone.

“If either of you miss timing because you’re gossiping, I’m demoting both of you,” he barks.

“That’s not a real thing,” Eli says while setting up on the line.

The rep starts before I can think too hard. I cut right, take the handoff clean, make the turn, and hear Luca shout something triumphant behind me. When I circle back, Eli shoulder-checks me lightly in passing and says, “Better,” and the grin on his face is so fucking easy that for one reckless second, I forget every ugly thing waiting off the field.

That’s probably why we keep goofing off. Not enough to get our asses handed to us—Luca would never allow that, friend or not. But enough that the energy stays loose between drills, and we all feel our ages instead of our damage for a little while. It’s not joy, exactly, because joy feels too clean a word for any of us these days, but it’s close enough to count.

By the time practice ends, I’m sweaty, tired, and in that strangely better mood that sometimes follows hard physical work. We head into the locker room in a loose cluster, talking over one another about dinner, class bullshit, and whether Mila’s gonna start recognizing the sound of Luca’s truck by now. Eli says she definitely already knows my voice, which should not hit me as hard as it does. Luca says she only knows my voice because I keep swearing in Afrikaans when the bottle warmer acts up.

The showers are hot, quick, and full of the usual post-practice noise. I’m toweling off at my locker, noticing most of the room has thinned out. Luca’s a few feet away, digging for a clean shirt while muttering at his phone, probably texting Sage.

Eli’s at his own locker, already half dressed in sweats and a white T-shirt that clings damply to his back where his hair is still wet. Everything feels ordinary enough that I don’t notice what’s off immediately.

It just registers as a lack of eye contact. Eli keeps answering me, keeps joining the conversation, keeps nodding when Luca says something about meeting with an advisor tomorrow, but he’s not really looking at me. Not directly. His gaze lands near me and then slips away.

Normally I’d write that off as tiredness. Or stress. Or him just being in his own head, which is a permanent condition at this point. But after a minute or two, it starts feeling different. Not distant or upset. Almost more… skittish.

I dry my hair with the towel and watch him in the mirror without being obvious about it. Luca’s still talking, but now my attention is split. Eli yanks a hoodie from his locker, drops it, swears under his breath, then bends to pick it up while talking too quickly about whether Mrs. Alvarez said Mila’s rash cream needs reordering. I answer on instinct because, yes, she did, and because I’m the kind of idiot who now knows our baby inventory better than some pharmacies. Still, while I’m answering, I catch the quick flick of Eli’s eyes down my body.

It’s fast enough that I almost convince myself I imagined it. He jerks his gaze away immediately, shoulders tightening under the white T-shirt, and shoves one arm into his hoodie as if he’s lost the ability to dress smoothly.

I look down at myself in automatic, stupid confusion. I’m still in my towel, water running dripping from my hair to down my back, one hand braced on the locker while I talk. There is absolutely nothing unusual about this. We share a locker room. He’s seen me shirtless, naked, half dressed, bruised, bloodied, and every other variation that football or growing up together allows. There should be nothing charged about the way he looked just now.